Disguise

How one song can become a powerful act of activism

The beauty of music is that it tells a vast array of stories about an endless expanse of humanity. It is said that there is a song for every experience, every emotion, every relationship. They are as broad or as detailed as you need them to be at any given moment. A song is a place where you can find comfort, companionship and even a warm feeling of community. The existence of a song is evidence that there is at least one person in the world who knows exactly how you feel. Best of all, a song leaves you feeling seen and heard on the deepest of levels.

Now try to imagine a world where that special song for you doesn’t exist because you have been declared a disgusting deviant by a society that has chosen to not even try to understand you. Imagine being denied solace or refuge from a daily battle against anger, fear, and discrimination from something as simple and “universal” as a song. You can, of course, experience the beauty of music, but from the outside looking in; mentally changing pronouns or twisting turns-of-phrase to fit your supposedly abhorrent identity. You find a way to make it work, but it is not quite the same as feeling wholly included in a world that should welcome everyone.

This is how I spent most of my youth.

I didn’t realize how demoralizing music could be to a queer kid seeking warmth and empathy in a song until 1978 when I first heard “Glad to be Gay” by the British singer/songwriter Tom Robinson. As an adult on the back end of a life spent as an activist, I can now fully appreciate song’s shrewd and aggressive politics, as well as its acerbic, quasi-punk style. I can find gratitude for the bravery that Robinson showed then and continues to show as a brilliant curator of independent music. But at the age of 15, I absolutely hated that song. I was just starting to wonder why I felt different than other boys, and the last thing I wanted to hear a cranky, gravel-voiced bloke lead what sounded like a drunken pub chant. It felt gritty and grimy in a way that I didn’t want. I wanted a pretty pop song, just like everyone else my age – but I wanted that song to be specifically about ME. It didn’t feel like a big ask, but it apparently was. There were none.

It would be years before I found what I craved.

Along the way, “Glad to be Gay” opened my eyes to the world around me. I started to notice that there were outliers like David Bowie, whose 1979 song and video “Boys Keep Swinging” both thrilled and terrified me for reasons that I could not discern at the time. All I knew then was that I was captivated, and I felt connected in a significant way. In retrospect, the video’s visual display of drag and the song’s exploration of gender identification as it pertained to being a young man was intoxicating. Why did I find the song simultaneously arousing and mind-expanding? I still ponder that question to this very day.

Beyond that seeming anomaly, the road to openly queer artists has been lonely and frequently shrouded in secrets and half-truths. As I embarked on my career in the music industry, I discovered that abject fear kept artists and industry professionals in the closet.

Even the Village People, the so-called quintessential gay band of the disco and later pop music were not out. Despite their queer-fetishized images of hypermasculinity and songs about varying degrees of male bonding, they never directly disclosed their orientation – or the fact that they were actively exploiting stereotypically homoerotic roles onstage. During their peak years of success, the band members were forbidden by their management to discuss their personal lives. It was a bid to both maintain the cartoonish nature of the band and to not commit to an actual “lifestyle.” In fact, Randy “the Cowboy” Jones famously revealed in an interview with me for Billboard magazine that he quit the band in 1980 because he was “emotionally exhausted by life in the closet. Everyone knew what we all about. But if you didn’t say anything, you didn’t have to risk any kind of fall-out from people who preferred to live in the dark from the truth.”

That would explain why the band’s 1980 movie Can’t Stop the Music was all about a group of likeminded people embarking on a new movement of liberation from discrimination without ever once uttering a word about what the actual point of discrimination was. It was no surprise that the movie was a spectacular bomb that brought the hitmaking era of the Village People to a close.

From there, the witch hunt for who “was” and who “wasn’t” among artists picked up momentum. While successful disco era artists like Dan Hartman, Paul Jabara, and Loleatta Holloway hid in the closet until their untimely respective passings, a wave of androgynous ‘80s era acts like Culture Club and took hold of the music world. There was just one thing. Like the Village People, few of them directly addressed their sexuality. There were swipes at then closeted George Michael and Pet Shop Boys members Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, while Boy George played with make-up but intentionally portrayed himself as borderline sex-less for all of Culture Club’s peak years. In fact, he admitted to me in a Billboard interview that he didn’t feel ready to make music about his sexuality until the 1995 solo album Cheapness & Beauty.

“That was when I felt ready to fully lift the veil of ambiguity and write about who I am and what I was experiencing,” he said. Since then, his music has been unapologetically honest and queer.

There are many more explosive points in the minefield of queers in pop music, not to mention a small cadre of brave heroes. Where would we be without fiery political aggression of Jimmy Somerville and Bronski Beat, or the joyous camp of Andy Bell and Erasure, for starters. There are many more volumes to be written about our evolution in music. And they will be. Count on it. I’m already working on it… in minute detail.

But this essay has been inspired by the new generation of queer voices in pop music. The young humans of all the many letters of queerdom and all the gender variations you can conjure. At the age of 60, I never thought I’d witness such matter-of-fact energy surrounding the identity of pop artists. The witch hunt is over. There are no more big coming-out stories. Some queer artists write about the rigors of their journey, while others are writing fun and sexy anthems of empowerment. There is sound and a song for everyone. Finally. When I listen to their music, the 15-year-old who hated “Glad to be Gay” is shedding tears of joy. The door has been unlocked and we are invited enter and mingle with everyone else.

I was recently particularly moved and inspired by one specific song. A simple, but honest ballad called “Disguise” by a young fella named Fred Roberts. It doesn’t strive to change the world, nor is it self-consciously trying to go “viral.” It’s simply a song about what it’s like to be on the sad side of unrequited love. It addresses the personal denial that is often inherent in some young people as they come of age. It’s an emotional tug of war that is unique to a young queer person – and it’s one that often occurs in secret.

When I first heard the song, I sobbed what felt like buckets. I went back to a very real memory of young heartbreak that I’d never shared with another person. They’d never understand, I long believed. No one would. For three and a half minutes, that younger version of me finally found solace and companionship – and he finally felt better about what happened all those years ago.

The interesting thing I have discovered anecdotally is that most of my straight friends do not get the power of “Disguise,” and that sort of makes sense. It’s not necessarily for them, beyond triggering feelings empathy for the fact that love can hurt us all. Despite its well-crafted words and melody, as well as an earnest vocal by Roberts, “Disguise” is also not edgy in the way that critics expect or want. It doesn’t aim to exist on the shapeshifting edges of pop music. Rather, it proudly lives in plain sight. It challenges the world to see that not all queer people live on the fringes of society with painted faces and pierced lips as we randomly shout “yass, queen!” We are everywhere and we come in every size, shape, and color. Many of us simply want to hold hands with the object of our desires, and have it lovingly reciprocated.

To finally have a beautiful song like that is not only a brilliant gift, but also a remarkable act of life-changing activism.

Here are some of the lyrics to “Disguise” by Fred Roberts

You loved me through the darkness of a cinema
Where movies played but none of them ever told our truth
I still blame you for the corners that we fell into
But younger me didn't mind being a secret to lose

After all the nights that I've lost
You're nothing that I do regret
Just everything I don't want again

Do I wish that I was somebody else?
Someone that you don't need to hide
So I could see the half of your life that you were keeping to yourself
Do I wish that I could go back in time?
And love you in the day and the night
Or maybe it's my luck in disguise that you were never really mine